I can't believe I'm about to do this, but this is a situation where Michael O'Church hit the nail on the head.

https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2014/07/13/how-the-othe...

The reason engineers and other tech staff will lose their jobs is because 1) politics above them, 2) lack of adequate technical understanding amongst mgmt to recognize how to usefully allocate technical staff, and 3) lack of political capital amongst the technical staff themselves.

That's a wonderfully over the top and appropriate article on the subject. And it resonates with me because the solution I've generally taken as an engineer is to annoy everyone around me with facts and benchmarks until I find someone in the management caste that has the same goals as I do and then jump ship to their team.

Considering the author, it's amusing that this blew up in my face at Google. Facts were irrelevant there, only status, and this was pointedly explained to me in an effort to get me to conform. So as a powerless new senior engineer blind allocated into something random and unsuitable, I found someone at another company with similar goals and jumped ship shortly after starting when it became clear that was my only other option.

In retrospect, had I endured the tedium of my initial assignment, everything I was saying ended up relevant once they hired people with status making use of my skillset to improve search.

Blech...

When whom to layoff is a political decision, layoffs will just compound the problem.

That always happens. The problem is the CEO needs an internal partner to get a list of people who need to be let go. And that's generally delegated to the immediate exec staff, they delegate to some layers below and when the list is built, it bubbles up back to the CEO.

In the process, most people think performance is the key to decide who stays and who leaves. While the fact is first ones to go are political enemies, followed by people who pose threat to the middle management(Kind of people who managers think will eventually take their job, if they stay) these kind of people are worst sufferers, because they would have performed well only to be perceived as threats. Next come people who don't fit well in the organization's pay parity. The last one's if they ever go are weak people who can be sacrificed to save manager's yes men and manger's inner circle.

What generally remains are people who are yes men, political alliances and generally people and partners needed to keep political cartels running.

Which is why if a company is laying off people, its generally an indication they will perform worse in the time to come. Because a round of good people have been laid off, many good ones are leaving. And worst stay on, and are more entrenched in the new set up.

That's because when the performance evaluations are top-down and forced to a curve, "performance" itself is a resource to be allocated, and resource allocation decisions are always political.

It's the "evaporative cooling" of groups.

"The problem is the CEO needs an internal partner to get a list of people who need to be let go."

Prepare three envelopes...

I wonder how they'll apply this plan in France, where the spirit of the law is, you may massively fire people only if it's part of "plan social", and the only argument is ofthen it's-this-or-we-go-bankrupt. Especially:

In those kind of schemes, you must ask who wants to leave, give them a package, avoid those with children, the older ones go last, etc. So I doubt they'd let go of the worst people first.

I get what you are saying, but you do make it sound like the (older) people with children are the worst ones, by virtue of having children or being older. Also there is a reason why these measures are in place, being that people with children have more risk (more expenses and responsibility) and are less mobile. And older people typically have a harder time in the job market.

That's correct, I didn't mean to talk about who should be fired first. I meant to say that the company doesn't really get to choose who should leave or stay. There are rules so we don't harm the economic tissue when firing people.

I'm yet to be convinced of how this economy can thrive in the first place. I'm persuaded most French people work in really Dilbertesque comapnies with unpassionnate workmates because of those rules, which correlates with the fact that French people are the first consumers of anti-depressants in the world [1]. I'm not saying it's linked for everyone.

[1] http://www.france24.com/en/20110802-france-world-most-depres...

good point. but there is a very small engineering team in france (the remainder of the musiwave acquisition) and the rest is sales and marketing that spans EMEA (europe and middle east). if there are cuts, likely not broadly hit.

They can always open a new company and hire only those they want from the existing one, can't they?

Those games are pretty obvious, and they've often been used. We judge by the spirit of the law more often than in US. I know a company of 5-8000 people who's firing 9 managers per month [1] so they don't fall into the "group layout" category. They have to persuade them with a resignation package. They plan a "plan social" in a few months. Here's documentation about it: [3]

It's a job. See this agency, at random: [2]. My godfather was a HR manager specialized in "plans sociaux" (=closing factories when famous tech brands moved to Asia), and his job was pretty much explaining CEO of other continents that they have to put money on the table to be allowed to dump a whole factory, which they couldn't really get, obviously. The mother company has to help refurbish the local economy so workers find new jobs, or hire a job agency to find jobs and prove workers aren't just ditched. When the job is done, he writes the last two resignations: his, and the local director. The length of the process is around 2 years for 500 people. Needless to say, mafia jobs are probably safer.

[1] See "New procedures for implementing mass lay-offs" in http://www.proskauer.com/publications/client-alert/new-labor...

[2] http://www.triplet.com/50-10_employment/50-12_laysoff.asp

[3] http://uk.practicallaw.com/0-503-0054#a362756

I always knew France had insane labor laws, but they idea of having to ask permission to close a factory is being insane to me.

Also while I doubt I will ever have to, I wouldn't start a business in France under those rules.